Hey Jude
by Jayne Foyer
Summary: At some point in the past four years, Castiel learned how to play the guitar. A Castiel-centric fanfic based on the alternate universe of 5x04, The End.


At some point in the past four years, Castiel learned how to play the guitar.

He didn't actually remember when. He'd been so doped up since the angels left, he supposed he'd picked it up along the way and miraculously managed to keep hold of it. The guitar he uses is very nearly broken beyond repair but nobody cares about fixing up an old instrument when the world's ending, and Castiel thinks that is _such _a _damn _shame.

Sometimes he sits outside and plays songs. Sometimes he sings along, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he just sits outside and lets the guitar sit in his lap because he's too far gone to remember how his fingers work. The others usually sit around a fire later at night; when he's sober enough to stand up straight, sometimes he goes and joins them and takes his guitar along and for a while, they listen to him. Some of them sing or dance, especially the kids. They always seem to try their hardest to save the children they find, which means that there are too many to look after, which means that there are a bunch of ten-year-olds growing up in this post-apocalyptic world with no parents. Castiel doesn't mind, mostly because he views children as just really small adults, but he sees that it bothers Dean. He tries to get involved with them, to help them out, to keep an eye out for them, but he's got a lot on his hands so he can't all the time.

When Castiel plays his guitar and the children dance around the fire, sometimes they laugh, and that's when Castiel notices that there's something like a bitter smile on Dean's face, and that makes Castiel sad for a reason that he can't define.

Castiel found a box full of old, old records in the attic of some abandoned house six miles from camp. They weren't going to take the whole box back; that would just be wasting space. But Castiel took one of the albums and held it close to his chest, and he looked at Dean with wide, pleading eyes, and Dean just sighed and nodded for him to get into the truck and that was how Castiel got that old Beatles album that he hangs on his wall. He asked around a little after that. You couldn't really play much music anymore but people remembered the songs and Castiel was getting better and better with his guitar. Eventually he learned most of the songs listed on the back of the album. Some songs were happier than others. Those, he tried not to play. But he started sitting on his porch more and more often. And he started singing more often, too, because once in a while he'd notice a group of kids within earshot who tended to gather to play something like soccer, except they'd abandoned all the rules a long time ago.

And then after a while, they forgot about the ball and they came to Castiel's little hut to dance. Ten, twenty, thirty kids. Well, not thirty. The highest number they'd ever had had been twenty-nine, and that was before Davis got infected and they had to put him down.

Castiel knew that Dean liked to look out for the kids. And it wasn't long before he appeared. At first, he kept his distance; he leaned against the big oak tree ten yards away, or pretended he was fixing up the truck down by the next house. Eventually, though, he gave up the pretence and walked right in, took a beer from inside, and then stood in the doorway as Castiel sat on the porch and strummed his guitar. He was working his way through those ten Beatles songs, the ones on the back of the album. After a while, he started practicing when no one was around, so that he didn't have to keep stopping when the kids were dancing.

And it wasn't just the kids, after a while. A few men and women showed up, too, until those nights turned into the closest thing to a party that they'd ever seen, and Castiel's music was more of a background buzz than the main attraction. People paid less and less attention to the guitar and the voice.

Except for Dean, who always just stood there in the doorway, saying nothing, listening, sipping a beer.

Castiel had just perfected the next song on his list. It had become a personal favourite of his, and he was nervous to unveil it for the first time, even though no one was listening. He knew that wasn't exactly true, though. He was nervous to perform it because he knew exactly who was listening.

The song started out quietly and simply, as most songs do.

_Hey Jude, don't make it bad._

Castiel, being (at least at one point in time) an angel, was supposed to have this heavenly, unearthly enchanting voice, but he'd discovered a while ago that his singing voice was only that of Jimmy Novak, which didn't bother him very much except to make him laugh occasionally. Angels weren't anything like humans thought they were.

_Take a sad song, and make it better._

Castiel liked this song. If he closed his eyes, he could almost make himself forget where he was and he could imagine that he was in the favourite Tuesday afternoon of an autistic man who had died in the 1950's. That had always been his favourite Heaven.

_Remember to let her into your heart. _

Castiel had seen many things since he had been created. Castiel had seen many things in the past five years, images burned into his mind, regrets that penetrated him deeply and left him empty. Castiel had broken a long time ago.

_Then you can start to make it better._

When had it been, exactly, that he had lost his grip on reality? Maybe the day the angels started screaming, the day he had buckled beneath the sound of them panicking in his ears. He remembered that day clearly. He'd nearly blacked out; he had fallen to the ground, all but seizing, and Dean had instantly been on his knees beside him, adding another frantic voice to the fray, but Castiel couldn't hear him. All he could hear was the angels' terrified cries.

_Hey Jude, don't be afraid._

"_Michael is dead_," they had told him. "_Lucifer,_" they had screamed. "_He's coming._"

_You were made to go out and get her._

And that was the day when the shell started to hollow itself. The day that Castiel started to dig a hole deep into whatever was left of him, a hole that he could retreat into, to make all the bad things go away.

_The minute you let her under your skin..._

Or maybe it was the day that they had been heading back to camp, and lining the road had been his dead brothers and sisters, their wings painted in black ash on the ground beneath them. Dean had refused to stop the car. Castiel had shouted at him, had screamed, but Dean just locked the doors and kept on driving, even when the so-called angel tried to take the wheel, even when the angel started to weep, even when Castiel started clawing at his own eyes and skin in desperation. Upon their arrival to camp, Dean had stopped the car and sat there for an hour as Castiel tried to find a way to control himself. Dean hadn't even said anything, he'd just sat there, staring out into the darkness, as his friend shook violently with pain and rage and grief.

_...then you begin to make it better._

Dean hadn't had to watch his brother die. Dean hadn't had to see his brother's body become one with the Devil. Dean hadn't seen his brother in years. Dean didn't understand Castiel's pain.

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain._

Dean and Castiel both knew what it meant. The massacre of angels had been a message. There was no good anymore. There was no Heaven. There was no redemption. Lucifer had won. And he was going to leave Castiel alive to watch the endtimes play out.

So there he was. Castiel, the last angel left in existence, and he was singing a Beatles song to a crowd of battered, dying humans.

_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders._

That was the best part about being human. Dying. You were always dying.

_For well, you know it's a fool who plays it cool..._

A quick death would be too merciful for Castiel. No, he poisoned himself slowly, in measures, a little at a time. He derived some pleasure from it. Just enough to numb himself from the pain.

_...by making his world a little colder._

It had been a few years since he'd been properly conscious. Sometimes he wondered why they still trusted him. He'd lost his mind years ago. His spirit had disappeared around the same time. And yet somehow he always found himself right beside Dean, organizing plans, a gun shoved unceremoniously into his hands. Sometimes he just sat in the corner and listened to Dean speak. But he never called him _Dean_ anymore, either. In a certain way, he felt that too informal for someone he respected so much. Revered. Worshipped. Castiel supposed that God was dead and so he started to follow the next best thing, and one day he'd decided on calling him Fearless Leader and that had stuck.

_Hey Jude, don't let me down._

He said it the same way that he used to say _Father_.

_You have found her, now go and get her._

Dean has never said anything, not even when Castiel first started using the title. Castiel suspects that's because Dean knows he can't understand and so he never says anything to Castiel anymore. He suspects Dean pities him. Damn right. Castiel deserves to be pitied.

_Remember to let her into your heart._

Castiel opened his eyes again and felt himself plummeting to earth, a shooting star in the brilliant, inky black night sky. He didn't realize the crowd had grown so much. Most of the camp was there now, but they were quiet. A profound hush had managed to blanket the group. They sat. They lay on the ground. They stared up at the stars, searching for a comet. There were none. All the angels were dead already.

_Then you can start to make it better._

Except for Castiel.

_So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin._

It was such a lonely existence.

_You're waiting for someone to perform with._

But sometimes he had hope. Sometimes he hoped that, when he lost his grace, it had been replaced with something else. Something better. Sometimes he hoped that he had been granted a soul. A soul marred with fingerprints on the edges, perhaps, a soul scarred by angelic residue, the traces of fallen grace, but a soul nonetheless. He hoped. He prayed. He compared himself to Dean Winchester before he remembered that, soul or not, he could never contend with his Fearless Leader.

_And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do._

Occasionally Castiel missed Team Free Will. He missed being an angel. He missed the time he could call Dean by his given name without feeling profane. He missed Sam Winchester, a boy no doubt still alive inside of the Devil. The thought made him sad. It made him even more sad that the Fearless Leader had never even suggested the thought of rescuing his own brother.

_The movement you need is on your shoulder._

Castiel supposed that maybe Dean wasn't so Fearless after all.

_Hey Jude, don't make it bad._

Or maybe Sam had ceased to be his brother a long time ago, in the same way that Castiel had ended his existence as an angel.

_Take a sad song, and make it better._

It changed nothing, though. It was useless to try to guess how Dean felt. The man was untouchable.

_Remember to let her under your skin..._

"Cas," said Dean.

_...then you'll begin to make it..._

Castiel stopped playing. "Fearless Leader?"

He glanced behind him, at Dean standing in the doorway. There were shining tear tracks trailing down his face. He didn't look at Castiel, just scanned the crowd, his face soft and his eyes in pain.

"Thank you," said what was left of Dean Winchester, and then he left, no doubt to open another beer, but Castiel heard everything that Dean hadn't said, and then there it was, out in the open, and suddenly Dean _was_ Cas's Fearless Leader, and suddenly Dean _did _understand what Cas had been through, and suddenly, bizarrely, Cas didn't feel quite so hopelessly alone.

Castiel turned back to the crowd, found his place in the song, and with something like a grin tugging on his appallingly human face, he sang.

_Better, better, better, better, better, oh!_

* * *

><p>Written because um have you <em>seen <em>Castiel in The End? He just screamed to be written about. I intended to write a longer fanfic about the descent to this, about Lucifer killing the angels and the loneliness Castiel feels and the way that Dean just sort of breaks off from everybody but I'm not sure I have the motivations. But I was listening to Hey Jude and well, this is what came of it. Tell me what you think.


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